The ongoing testimony of retired police commander Lt. Col. (res.) Tzachi Havkin, a former Lahav 433 investigator and member of the teams that handled Prime Minister Netanyahu’s cases, in the cases against Netanyahu, has sparked major public uproar in Israel.
On Sunday, Havkin provided more dramatic testimony in court about the illegal behavior of the police and prosecutors in the cases, including concealment of vital information and the brutal interrogation tactics used against state witnesses in the case, all former aides of Netanyahu.
Havkin said that the prosecution knew about the illegal interrogation tactics used to extract testimony from key state witness Nir Hefetz but denied it to the public. He added that the police felt that the prosecution tried to evade responsibility and shift the blame onto the investigators, even though it was involved in all stages of the interrogation.
In 2021, Hefetz said that the police had kept him in harsh conditions, including a bed with fleas, deprived him of sleep and adequate food, and threatened to publicly humiliate him. After waking up on his second night in police custody covered in flea bites and requesting medical care, he was ignored until he collapsed on the floor of his cell.
“After a few days, a doctor came and saw my wounds, and he told the investigators, ‘It’s not okay that he hasn’t seen a doctor until now,’” Hefetz said at the time.
But the most dramatic part of Havkin’s testimony dealt with state witness Shlomo Filber’s digital diary. Havkin confirmed that the diary, seized in real time by the police, contained exculpatory information (information that clears someone from blame) regarding the “guidance meeting” at the heart of the indictment in Case 4000 (the most serious case against Netanyahu). The diary did not indicate any meeting between Netanyahu and Filber at the alleged times, a fact that was further supported by phone location data. Nevertheless, the diary was not handed over to the defense or to the court.
Havkin described how, despite the prosecution and police being aware of the fact that there was no “guidance meeting,” this clause remained in the indictment. Filber was even required to “write up a diary” from memory instead of being shown the real digital diary. Havkin clarified that this did not align with accepted investigative standards and that he himself had warned his superiors about it.
Havkin also reiterated that internal warnings from investigators in the unit were not addressed. He said he held discussions on the matter with his superiors, but nothing changed, and the digital diary was not presented to Filber’s interrogators or to the defense.
The picture emerging from Havkin’s testimony is unequivocal: The digital diary containing exculpatory information was hidden, the central meeting in the indictment did not take place at the alleged time, and internal warnings within the unit were ignored. All of this, as described in his testimony, occurred in real time during the handling of one of the country’s most sensitive public cases.
During his testimony in January 2025, Netanyahu slammed the police and investigators for using testimony against him that was illegally obtained from former aides Nir Hefetz, Shlomo Filber and Ari Harrow.
In February 2025, Filber filed a multi-million lawsuit against Israel Prison Services and the Israel Police’s 443 investigative unit, former Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, former State Attorney Shai Nitzan, former senior state prosecutor Liat Ben-Ari, current prosecutor in the cases, Yehudit Tirosh, and several other officials.
Filber’s attorneys detailed in the lawsuit: “During his arrest and interrogation, particularly in the stages leading up to his signing of the state witness agreement, the defendants subjected Filber to seven circles of hell in a severe campaign of abuse. This culminated in a brutal act of sodomy committed by a prison officer at Hadarim Prison the night before he signed the agreement.”
According to Filber’s lawsuit, the assault, which he also testified about during Netanyahu’s trial, was “the result of premeditated planning and was deliberately carried out with the involvement of all the defendants, aiming to crush his dignity, humiliate him, and break his spirit.”
Filber’s attorneys stated that the alleged abuse and the humiliating search “led to the confessions extracted from him and caused him to sign the state witness agreement while in a completely unstable mental state.”
Previously, Filber and his wife also sued the state and the police for alleged invasion of privacy and violation of personal space in the Pegasus spyware affair, stating that the police carried out a “covert criminal investigation against Filber and his wife during which they infiltrated his mobile phone using spyware and extracted personal information.
During his testimony as a state witness, Filber repeatedly contradicted himself. He originally testified that Netanyahu instructed him (during the non-existent “guidance meeting”) to provide financial benefits to Bezeq in exchange for favorable coverage from Walla. However, when he was cross-examined, he contradicted himself and said that Netanyahu had never issued such instructions. Later, he contradicted himself once again, saying that his original testimony was correct. In any event, claims that Netanyahu received favorable media coverage have been completely disproven during the ongoing trial.
Havkin’s testimony was so damning last week that Channel 14 journalist Yinon Magal provided a transcript of some of his testimony entitled “The Comedy Of The Netanyahu Trial.”
In past testimonies, Habkin testified that the highest-ranking police investigators assigned to the cases forged, lied, tampered with evidence, perjured themselves, and committed a long list of extremely serious criminal offenses. He also testified that then-Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit authorized only one specific investigative action, but the police investigators expanded the investigation on their own—without legal approval. In addition, a senior police officer (with the rank of Assistant Commissioner) who led the investigations against Netanyahu allegedly instructed investigators to obstruct the investigation.
(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
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One Response
Where is president herzog where is your conscience where is the pardon your silence speaks of Sedom you are an evil deep state lib does he need to submit a request for pardon to further humiliate him pardon the damn man already